In Steve McQueen’s Small Axe film series, Lovers Rock is bookended by two installments based on true stories. It’s preceded by Mangrove, telling the story of the 1970 trial between a group of Black British activists, the Mangrove Nine, who clashed with the racist police force in the Notting Hill neighborhood of London. And Lovers Rock will be followed, next week, by Red, White, and Blue, an origin story about Leroy Logan, a first-generation Brit who, in 1983, ended up joining the ranks of the police force that terrorized the neighborhood. McQueen’s series of five films straddles the boundary between film and television, offering up feature-length installments that all lean on each other to create a larger story. That could not be more clear than the magnificent 68-minute Lovers Rock, which, in between two true stories of policing, offers a fictional story of a London house party on one Saturday night in the ’80s, as Cynthia (Ellis George) celebrates her 17th birthday.
Mangrove and the upcoming Red, White, and Blue, which I’ll be reviewing next week, are stories of struggle. Lovers Rock is a snapshot of jubilation. In a gorgeous cascade of emotion that tracks the heady ups and downs of youth on a weekend night, we watch the alchemy of a dance party coming together; we groove on the floor cleared of plastic-wrapped furniture to the records spun by a team of toked-up amateur DJs; we are the lovers meeting for the first time in the dim light, pressing against each other with joyous abandon. You don’t have to know the context of underground Caribbean “blues parties” or that “lovers rock” is a sub-genre of reggae popular in Britain to be swept along in the intoxicating vibe of the evening, which we see mostly through the eyes of Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn). In the first scene, Martha sneaks out of her second-floor bedroom window, throwing her nice shoes out first so she won’t scuff them on the wall. In the gathering dusk she meets up with her friend Patty (Shaniqua Okwok) at a playground, where they smoke cigarettes while waiting for the bus. Meanwhile Cynthia’s apartment has been taken over: The living room, scoured clean to make room for a big array of speakers and a turntable, manned by Samson (Kadeem Ramsay) and his crew; the kitchen, by a crowd of singing head-wrapped women, making curry goat and other beloved favorites to sell to the guests. It’s hours before showtime, but excitement crackles through the air. Cynthia goes upstairs to get ready, and she and her roommate (Saffron Coomber) dance together in their bathrobes before running a hot comb through her hair, making steam rise from the straightened section.
Lovers Rock is composed of these achingly beautiful details, creating a composition of the night from the perspectives of a dozen people at the party. Though there is dialogue, scripted by Courttia Newland, much of the story is wordless, conveyed via look or gesture or the shift in mood when one record is swapped for the next. McQueen captures the condensation dripping down the walls, the glances across the dance floor, the awkward pick-up lines attempted on girls waiting for the bathroom. It makes Lovers Rock pop with vitality. The story is ostensibly fictional, but it thrums with life.
Janet Kay’s 1979 single “Silly Games” makes for one of the most arresting sequences in the film. Early on, the women cooking in the kitchen sing it together, tripping over the glass-shattering high notes, laughing at themselves for even attempting it. Then, that night, the DJ puts it on, and the dance floor floods with women who close their eyes, hold their hands to their hearts, and sway along with Kay, whose lyrics insist that she will stop tolerating games from her lover, even as her lovelorn voice indicates that she’s not going anywhere. Some women dance with male partners, but others vibe solo, abstracted expressions on their faces, lost in the music. The song ends, but the listeners aren’t done with it. They keep singing the lyrics, bringing the whole dance floor with them to hear the song one more time—this time from their own mouths. The high notes are still tricky, but they’re much more confident this time around. In so many other movies, this would have been a throwaway scene. In Lovers Rock, it’s a centerpiece, a slowly shifting, moody dynamic that takes up minutes and minutes of screen time. (The moment also features a significant cameo: Dennis Bovell, the song’s writer, appears as Cynthia’s downstairs neighbor, and is on the dance floor for “Silly Games.”)
It’s a scene that stands in stark contrast to a later one, when an unexpected guest brings an undercurrent of aggressive energy to the dance floor. The DJ’s choice of the Revolutionaries’ smooth and electric “Kunta Kinte Dub” strikes a nerve; the floor crowds with men, so consumed by the music that they’re twisting and diving in the center of the floor, throwing their fists up. The track ends and they crowd the turntable, which suddenly seems fragile opposite the mass of people, to demand a replay. The predominantly feminine energy of “Silly Games” makes way for something far more masculine with “Kunta Kinte Dub,” but McQueen stitches together the evening so that the transition from one vibe to another feels seamless—it’s just an evolution of the mood on the floor, which ebbs and flows depending on who’s dancing. Music is a crucial element of the three installments of Small Axe I’ve seen so far; Lovers Rock goes so far as to essentially make the music of the Caribbean community into the main character of the story. Through it we experience the broad emotional themes that colored the previous episode, Mangrove: the longing for stability, the fury against oppression, the solace in each other’s company.
Cynthia and Martha act as each other’s doppelgängers throughout the night, mirroring each other and rarely speaking. But the story of the night is Martha’s immediate spark with a young man named Franklyn (Micheal Ward). The pair become inseparable over the course of the evening, in a way that is built on both attraction and interest; as the night becomes unpredictable, in the delicious way that parties do, they gravitate towards each other, silently resolving to go through it together. Newland and McQueen are showing us how love blooms amidst the music, how the spaces that this community carved out for itself in a hostile landscape end up nurturing these precious intimacies, be it a connection between horny teenagers, or soulmates, or both.